The dress is a hybrid of machine-knitting and hand-knitting in short-row-method.
The violet parts were made of recycled yarn our late Aunt used for a sweater in lace-pattern (see picture).
I needed seven hours to wind the yarn into knittable skeins. The seams were fixed so strongly that they would have survived ages.

My first intention was to make an elegant dress like Mary Dowse created them in the 80s and 90s. Does anybody know her? Has anyone some of her patterns? I would like to buy them. In the picture you see an extract of one of Mary Dowse’s unique handwritten patterns.

Unfortunately neither yarn nor drape suits to my intented result and after having frogged the parts several times I decided to create my own design.

The machine-knitted parts are two pieces connecting front and back. The shoulders were shaped with short-rows.
Back and front are sewn together at sleeve- and side seam.
The hand-knitted part is worked in one piece and starts with the back panel. It’s connected to the other part with three-needle-bind-off. The bottom is knitted together with the open cast-on and cast-off-stitches of the machine-knitted parts.
Finally I decided for shoulder pads.

Short-rowing-method
I cannot describe the pattern because I worked this very intuitive. But you may want to learn the technique of shortrow-knitting:
Join the Swing-Knitting-Group on Ravelry and study the written tutorials from Heidrun which are available in English and German and soon also in French http://swing-knitting.com/